WASHINGTON (AP) -- The resignation of National Security Adviser Michael Flynn elicited a simple but persistent question Tuesday from congressional Democrats: What did President Donald Trump know and when did he know it?...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Donald Trump was told in late January that his top national security aide had misled his vice president, three weeks before Trump ousted adviser Michael Flynn amid a swirling public controversy over Flynn&apos;s contacts with a Russian official, a White House spokesman said Tuesday....

On Friday, the Director of the CIA, Mike Pompeo, used his first trip abroad to present Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef with the CIA’s highest award for fighting terrorism, the George Tenet Medal. Although the ceremony wasn’t covered by any of the major media, it was picked up on various blogsites where the news was greeted with predictable howls of outrage. Not surprisingly, most American’s still see Saudi Arabia as the epicenter of global terrorism, a point which was underlined in a recent article at The Atlantic titled “Where America’s Terrorists Actually Come From”. Here’s an excerpt:

“…after sifting through databases, media reports, court documents, and other sources, Alex Nowrasteh, an immigration expert at the libertarian Cato Institute, has arrived at a striking finding: Nationals of the seven countries singled out by Trump have killed zero people in terrorist attacks on U.S. soil between 1975 and 2015.

Zero…

Nowrasteh has listed foreign-born individuals who committed or were convicted of attempting to commit a terrorist attack on U.S. soil by their country of origin and the number of people they killed. … the countries at the top of the list, including Saudi Arabia and Egypt, are not included in Trump’s ban…

The 9/11 attacks were carried out by 19 men—from Saudi Arabia (15), the United Arab Emirates (2), Egypt (1), and Lebanon (1). The incident remains influential in how Americans think about the nature of terrorism.” (“Where America’s Terrorists Actually Come From“, The Atlantic)

While it’s true that 9-11 has shaped the way that Americans think about terrorism, it’s also true that most people are unaware of the deeper operational relationship between the CIA and the Saudis that dates back to the funding of the Mujahidin in Afghanistan in the 1970’s. This is where bin Laden and al Qaida first burst onto the scene, which is to say, that the sketchy CIA-Saudi connection created the seedbed for the War on Terror. Unfortunately, even now– 16 years after the attacks of 9-11– the relationship between the notorious intel agency and its Middle East allies remains as foggy as ever. As a result, the Saudis are typically fingered as the main source of the problem while the CIA’s role is conveniently swept under the rug. For example, take a look at this clip from an article in the Independent:

“Saudi Arabia is the single biggest contributor to the funding of Islamic extremism and is unwilling to cut off the money supply, according to a leaked note from Hillary Clinton.

The US Secretary of State says in a secret memorandum that donors in the kingdom still “constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide” and that “it has been an ongoing challenge to persuade Saudi officials to treat terrorist financing emanating from Saudi Arabia as a strategic priority”…

Saudi Arabia is accused, along with Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, of failing to prevent some of its richest citizens financing the insurgency against Nato troops in Afghanistan. Fund-raisers from the Taliban regularly travel to UAE to take advantage of its weak borders and financial regulation to launder money.

However, it is Saudi Arabia that receives the harshest assessment. The country from which Osama bin Laden and most of the 9/11 terrorists originated, according to Mrs Clinton, “a critical financial support base for al-Qa’ida, the Taliban, Lashkar-e-Toiba and other terrorist groups, including Hamas, which probably raise millions of dollars annually from Saudi sources, often during the Haj and Ramadan”.

“Biden said that “our biggest problem is our allies” who are engaged in a proxy Sunni-Shiite war against Syrian President Bashar Assad. He specifically named Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

“What did they do? They poured hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad – except that the people who were being supplied were (Jabhat) Al-Nusra and al-Qaeda and the extremist elements of jihadis coming from other parts of the world,” Mr Biden said.” (“Joe Biden forced to apologize to UAE and Turkey over Syria remarks“, Telegraph)

The evidence against Saudi Arabia is overwhelming and damning, and that’s what makes Pompeo’s performance in Riyadh so confusing. Why is the head of the CIA bestowing an award on a man who could undoubtedly identify some of the world’s biggest terrorist donors, unless, of course, the CIA derives some benefit from the arrangement?

Is that it? Is there is a quid pro quo between Washington and the Saudis that no one knows about but from which Washington reaps tangible geopolitical benefits?

It’s certainly within the realm of possibility.

Is it too far-fetched to think that the Saudis are actually a franchise that acts as Langley’s primary subcontractor carrying out operations deemed too sensitive for its own agents while obscuring the Company’s role behind a cloak of plausible deniability? Isn’t that what Friday’s freakishly Orwellian awards ceremony really suggests, that the skullduggery is much darker, deeper and more complicated than anyone would care to imagine?

Washington’s support for the Mujahidin helped to push the Soviets out of Afghanistan which is why the Brzezinski crowd thought it was a success story. If that’s the case, then isn’t it logical to assume that subsequent administrations might have used the same model elsewhere, like Kosovo, Somalia, Sudan, Libya, Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan?

Isn’t it at least worth investigating?

And, another thing: Is it possible to uncover the root of terror by capturing and interrogating individual terrorists to find out what they know?

No, it’s not possible, because the individual cogs have never revealed the source of the funding-streams which originate from within the deep state. Every effort has been made to distance the authors from their illicit handiwork, to remove the tracks and erase the fingerprints. Once again, it’s all about plausible deniability and preventing the public from identifying the real perpetrators. Which means the only way to end this madness is by shedding light on the shadowy goings on between the Intel agencies and their Middle East proxies. There’s no other way.

One thing is certain, you’re not going to win the war on terror by handing out medals to the prime suspects.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Donald Trump was told in late January that his top national security aide had misled his vice president, three weeks before Trump ousted adviser Michael Flynn amid a swirling public controversy over Flynn&apos;s contacts with a Russian official, a White House spokesman said Tuesday....

On Friday, the Director of the CIA, Mike Pompeo, used his first trip abroad to present Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef with the CIA’s highest award for fighting terrorism, the George Tenet Medal. Although the ceremony wasn’t covered by any of the major media, it was picked up on various blogsites where the news was greeted with predictable howls of outrage. Not surprisingly, most American’s still see Saudi Arabia as the epicenter of global terrorism, a point which was underlined in a recent article at The Atlantic titled “Where America’s Terrorists Actually Come From”. Here’s an excerpt:

“…after sifting through databases, media reports, court documents, and other sources, Alex Nowrasteh, an immigration expert at the libertarian Cato Institute, has arrived at a striking finding: Nationals of the seven countries singled out by Trump have killed zero people in terrorist attacks on U.S. soil between 1975 and 2015.

Zero…

Nowrasteh has listed foreign-born individuals who committed or were convicted of attempting to commit a terrorist attack on U.S. soil by their country of origin and the number of people they killed. … the countries at the top of the list, including Saudi Arabia and Egypt, are not included in Trump’s ban…

The 9/11 attacks were carried out by 19 men—from Saudi Arabia (15), the United Arab Emirates (2), Egypt (1), and Lebanon (1). The incident remains influential in how Americans think about the nature of terrorism.” (“Where America’s Terrorists Actually Come From“, The Atlantic)

While it’s true that 9-11 has shaped the way that Americans think about terrorism, it’s also true that most people are unaware of the deeper operational relationship between the CIA and the Saudis that dates back to the funding of the Mujahidin in Afghanistan in the 1970’s. This is where bin Laden and al Qaida first burst onto the scene, which is to say, that the sketchy CIA-Saudi connection created the seedbed for the War on Terror. Unfortunately, even now– 16 years after the attacks of 9-11– the relationship between the notorious intel agency and its Middle East allies remains as foggy as ever. As a result, the Saudis are typically fingered as the main source of the problem while the CIA’s role is conveniently swept under the rug. For example, take a look at this clip from an article in the Independent:

“Saudi Arabia is the single biggest contributor to the funding of Islamic extremism and is unwilling to cut off the money supply, according to a leaked note from Hillary Clinton.

The US Secretary of State says in a secret memorandum that donors in the kingdom still “constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide” and that “it has been an ongoing challenge to persuade Saudi officials to treat terrorist financing emanating from Saudi Arabia as a strategic priority”…

Saudi Arabia is accused, along with Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, of failing to prevent some of its richest citizens financing the insurgency against Nato troops in Afghanistan. Fund-raisers from the Taliban regularly travel to UAE to take advantage of its weak borders and financial regulation to launder money.

However, it is Saudi Arabia that receives the harshest assessment. The country from which Osama bin Laden and most of the 9/11 terrorists originated, according to Mrs Clinton, “a critical financial support base for al-Qa’ida, the Taliban, Lashkar-e-Toiba and other terrorist groups, including Hamas, which probably raise millions of dollars annually from Saudi sources, often during the Haj and Ramadan”.

“Biden said that “our biggest problem is our allies” who are engaged in a proxy Sunni-Shiite war against Syrian President Bashar Assad. He specifically named Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

“What did they do? They poured hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad – except that the people who were being supplied were (Jabhat) Al-Nusra and al-Qaeda and the extremist elements of jihadis coming from other parts of the world,” Mr Biden said.” (“Joe Biden forced to apologize to UAE and Turkey over Syria remarks“, Telegraph)

The evidence against Saudi Arabia is overwhelming and damning, and that’s what makes Pompeo’s performance in Riyadh so confusing. Why is the head of the CIA bestowing an award on a man who could undoubtedly identify some of the world’s biggest terrorist donors, unless, of course, the CIA derives some benefit from the arrangement?

Is that it? Is there is a quid pro quo between Washington and the Saudis that no one knows about but from which Washington reaps tangible geopolitical benefits?

It’s certainly within the realm of possibility.

Is it too far-fetched to think that the Saudis are actually a franchise that acts as Langley’s primary subcontractor carrying out operations deemed too sensitive for its own agents while obscuring the Company’s role behind a cloak of plausible deniability? Isn’t that what Friday’s freakishly Orwellian awards ceremony really suggests, that the skullduggery is much darker, deeper and more complicated than anyone would care to imagine?

Washington’s support for the Mujahidin helped to push the Soviets out of Afghanistan which is why the Brzezinski crowd thought it was a success story. If that’s the case, then isn’t it logical to assume that subsequent administrations might have used the same model elsewhere, like Kosovo, Somalia, Sudan, Libya, Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan?

Isn’t it at least worth investigating?

And, another thing: Is it possible to uncover the root of terror by capturing and interrogating individual terrorists to find out what they know?

No, it’s not possible, because the individual cogs have never revealed the source of the funding-streams which originate from within the deep state. Every effort has been made to distance the authors from their illicit handiwork, to remove the tracks and erase the fingerprints. Once again, it’s all about plausible deniability and preventing the public from identifying the real perpetrators. Which means the only way to end this madness is by shedding light on the shadowy goings on between the Intel agencies and their Middle East proxies. There’s no other way.

One thing is certain, you’re not going to win the war on terror by handing out medals to the prime suspects.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. lawmakers, including some leading Republicans, called on Tuesday for a deeper inquiry into White House ties to Russia, after national security adviser Michael Flynn resigned in President Donald Trump's biggest staff upheaval so far.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump knew for weeks that national security adviser Michael Flynn had misled the White House about his contacts with Russia but did not immediately force him out, an administration spokesman said on Tuesday.

Michael Phelps and Donald Trump have a few things in common. Like, they’re both really tall, they have a thing for beauty queens, they make funny faces and, of course, the two men have worked hard to rise to the top of their respective fields. But there’s a big difference in how they go about that last one.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump knew for weeks that national security adviser Michael Flynn had misled the White House about his contacts with Russia but did not immediately force him out, an administration spokesman said on Tuesday.

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon's Prime Minister called Hezbollah's arms illegitimate on Tuesday after its President said the group's military wing was vital to its security, spelling out the country's political divisions more clearly than at any time since they took office.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A senior naval officer who served under President Donald Trump's Defense Secretary James Mattis is the leading candidate to replace Michael Flynn after the national security adviser resigned under pressure over his conversations with a Russian diplomat, two U.S. officials said on Tuesday.

Michael T. Flynn resigned as national security adviser last night after it was revealed that he had misled Vice President Mike Pence and other top White House officials about his conversations with the Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak. The New York Timesreports that Flynn had previously denied that he’d had any substantive conversations with Kislyak, and Pence had repeated the claim on national television. Flynn later walked back his denial, telling the Washington Post through a spokesman that he “couldn’t be certain that the topic never came up.”

The Postinforms us that former acting Attorney General Sally Yates informed White House counsel Donald McGahn last month that Flynn had not been entirely forthcoming about content of his conversations and was a security risk because he was potentially vulnerable to Russian blackmail. Then-Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper, Jr. and then-CIA Director John Brennan agreed with Yates’s assessment and concurred with her recommendation to inform the White House. It is unclear what McGahn did with the information.

The AP tells us that while the Kremlin has downplayed Flynn’s resignation, Russian lawmakers have expressed their disappointment over Flynn’s exit. Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of the foreign relations committee of the Federation Council, said that firing a national security advisor for his contacts with Russia is “not just paranoia but something even worse.” And Alexei Pushkov, chairman of the information committee at the Federation Council, said that “it was not Flynn who was targeted but relations with Russia.” It is not clear whether Flynn’s resignation will influence bilateral ties.

CNN reports that a number of GOP senators are calling for an investigation into connections between President Donald Trump and Russia, and want former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn to testify. Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-TX) told reporters that the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence should look into this carefully, and Senator Roy Blunt, who is a member of the SSCI said that wants to speak to Flynn, and that “we should look into it exhaustively so that at the end of this process, nobody wonder whether there was a stone left unturned.” Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) also joined the calls. Senator Richard Burr (R-NC), chairman of the SSCI, told reporters he hasn’t made a decision about whether Flynn should testify, while Senator Mark Warner (D-VA), the ranking Democrat on the committee, has said that he should.

The Guardianwrites that retired Army Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg, who until yesterday was the Executive Secretary of the National Security Council, has now been appointed acting national security adviser by the Trump administration. Kellogg has been promoted over Deputy National Security Advisor K.T. McFarland, who is likely to resign her position as well, according to the Times. The Los Angeles Timesexamines Kellogg’s time in Iraq in 2003 under L. Paul Bremer, where he was “the guy who’s supposed to make the trains run on time.”

The Postnotes that the front-runner to replace Flynn as national security advisor is Vice Admiral Robert Harward, a former deputy commander of U.S. Central Command. Vice President Mike Pence is reportedly leading the discussions and working closely with Defense Secretary James Mattis, Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, CIA Director Mike Pompeo, White House senior advisor Jared Kushner, chief strategist Steve Bannon, and White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus. Buzzfeedadds that former CIA Director David Petraeus is also in the running, as is Kellogg.

The New York Timesinforms us that Russia has secretly deployed a new cruise missile despite complaints from American officials that this violates a 1987 treaty that bans American and Russian intermediate-range missiles based on land. The missile has been an issue since 2014, when the Obama administration attempted to persuade the Russians to correct the violation of the treaty while the missile was still in its test phase. But the Russians have moved ahead with the system, deploying a fully operational unit of two battalions. The move presents a crucial test of Trump’s vow to improve relations with Russia, at a time when key policy positions in the State Department and Defense Department have yet to be filled, and the National Security Council is in disarray.

Politicoinforms us that the White House has been under fire in a string of high-profile controversies over its handling of sensitive information, most recently regarding President Trump’s taking a phone call about the North Korean missile test and poring over government documents using flashlights from cell phones vulnerable to hacking, all while sitting in full view of guests at his private Mar-a-Lago club in Florida. On that note, Senators Claire McCaskill (Mo.) and Tom Carper (Del.) released a letter on Monday to Defense Secretary James Mattis asking for details on the phone and raising the issue of the proper archiving of Trump’s tweets. The two senators are specifically asking the Defense Information Security Agency (DISA) to give a written response as to whether Trump has received and is using a secured smartphone.

The Timesreports that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s half-brother, Kim Jong Nam, was assassinated in a Kuala Lumpur airport yesterday. A South Korean government official reportedly believes the two spies who carried out the assassination were dispatched by North Korea. Nam, who was once considered to be the heir apparent to Kim Jong Il, Nam had been openly critical of his half-brother’s rule. Reuters reports that the United States strongly believes that the killing was ordered by Kim Jong Un. Nam’s death comes just one day after a ballistic missile test by North Korea led to condemnation by the United States and Japan.

CNN notes that Secret Service Director Joseph Clancy has announced his retirement, effective in early March. In recent weeks, Clancy denied reports of tension between the Secret Service and President Trump’s private security contractors.

BBC reports that Queen Elizabeth II opened the U.K. National Cyber Security Centre as part of the GCHQ, Britain’s communications intelligence agency, this morning. The Centre, part of a £1.9bn five-strategy, is designed to better protect Britain from cyberattacks, particularly in light of recent efforts by Russia.

Reuters notes that Germany is moving forward with plans to strengthen military ties with other European nations in the face of increasing pressure from the United States to raise military spending, setting up a joint fleet of Lockheed Martin Corp C-130J transport planes with France and joining a Netherlands-led fleet of Airbus A330 tanker planes. The agreements are part of a broader effort to expand European defense cooperation, which will be announced at a meeting of NATO defense ministers in Brussels. German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen, who has called the U.S. demands for greater burden-sharing “fair,” will sign the expanded declaration of intent for the joint fleet with France.

The Timeswrites that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau struck a cordial tone yesterday during his meeting with Trump, alternating between trying to bridge gaps on issues such as immigration, refugees, trade, and climate change, and avoiding them altogether. Trump skirted a question about whether he sees the northern border with Canada as secure, and Trudeau avoided answering questions about Trump’s refugee executive order, saying “the last thing Canadians expect is for me to come down and lecture another country on how they choose to govern themselves.” Maintaining Canada’s close political and economic ties with the United States were at the top of Trudeau’s agenda, especially given Trump’s recent calls to renegotiate NAFTA.

The AP informs us that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit tomorrow with Trump that is clouded in uncertainty, given that Trump appears to have softened his tone on some of the key issues in the U.S.-Israel relationship, most notably including settlement construction, since taking office. Netanyahu faces pitfalls from many American Jews who oppose Trump’s policies and pressure from back home to push for policies Trump may not accept.

The Wall Street Journal tells us that Judge Leonie Brinkema of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia granted a statewide preliminary injunction blocking a key section of the executive order restricting entry into the United States from seven majority-Muslim countries. Brinkema cited the president’s campaign-trail comments endorsing a “Muslim ban” to argue that the order was likely unconstitutional under the Establishment Clause.

Human Rights Watch has released a study saying that chlorine gas attacks paved the way for Syrian forces as they advanced into rebel-held portions of eastern Aleppo during the final battle for the cityaccording to the Post. “The pattern of the chlorine attacks shows that they were coordinated with the overall military strategy for retaking Aleppo, not the work of a few rogue elements,” according to Ole Solvang of Human Rights Watch. Eight separate attacks resulted in the death of nine civilians, including four children, and wounded roughly 200 people.

The Timeswrites that the Trump administration is considering whether it should transfer an al Qaeda operative being held in Yemen who is wanted on terrorism charges in New York to Guantanamo Bay prison. Abu Khaybar, who was captured in Yemen last fall, presents an important legal and policy test for Trump, who promised to fill the prison with “bad dudes.” The decision to transfer Khaybar to Guantanamo would put the administration at odds with career Justice Department prosecutors and FBI agents who say criminal courts at handling terrorism cases than military tribunals, which have been troubled by setbacks and delays.

NPR informs us that Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl appeared at a hearing before a military judge yesterday, during which his lawyers argued that President Trump’s comments on the case will prevent their client from receiving a fair trial. Trump personally commented on Bergdahl at length during the campaign, repeatedly referring to Bergdahl as a traitor. Bergdahl’s lawyers submitted a motion to dismiss the charges of desertion and misbehavior he faces. Army prosecutors have alleged that Bergdahl put the lives of other soldiers at risk by disappearing and then having to be exchanged after more than five years in captivity for five Taliban detainees who were held at Guantanamo.

ICYMI: Yesterday, on Lawfare

Paul Gewirtz explained how the lack of impulsiveness by the courts in dealing with President Trump’s refugee executive order should guide the Supreme Court going forward.

Josh Blackman studied the reasoning of the Ninth Circuit’s panel opinion in Washington v. Trump in Part I of a two-part essay.

Tim Maurer and Hannes Ebert flagged their curated list of publications covering cybersecurity in international relations and distinguished it from similar cybersecurity compendiums.

Benjamin Wittes posted about the upcoming Hoover Institution event Cybersecurity in the Trump Administration: What Should We Expect?

Jack Goldsmith argued that in the wake of the Flynn imbroglio, the spotlight will fall to Donald McGahn as White House counsel.

Samuel Moyn asked where we are now in the post 9/11 struggles over America’s national security and surveillance state.

Shane Reeves examined what happens in international law when states no longer govern and non-state actors take over.

Email the Roundup Team noteworthy law and security-related articles to include, and follow us onTwitter and Facebook for additional commentary on these issues.Sign up to receive Lawfare in your inbox. Visit our Events Calendar to learn about upcoming national security events, and check out relevant job openings on our Job Board.

Russia has deployed a new cruise missile despite complaints by U.S. officials that it violates an arms control treaty banning ground-based U.S. and Russian intermediate-range missiles, the New York Times reported on Tuesday, citing unidentified officials. The newspaper said Russia had secretly deployed the ground-launched SSC-8 cruise missile that Moscow has been developing and testing for several years, despite U.S. complaints that it violated sections of the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces treaty. The Russian Defense Ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the New York Times story. The U.S. State Department concluded in a July 2014 arms control report that "the Russian Federation is in violation of its obligations under the INF Treaty not to possess, produce, or flight-test a ground-launched cruise missile (GLCM) with a range capability of 500 km to 5,500 km (310 miles to 3,420 miles), or to possess or produce launchers of such missiles." Russia accused Washington of conducting "megaphone diplomacy" after the accusation was repeated by the State Department in 2015. Moscow also denied it had violated the INF treaty, which helped end the Cold War between the two countries. The New York Times said the previous U.S. administration of President Barack Obama had attempted to persuade Moscow to correct the violation while the missile was still in the testing phase. Instead, Russia has moved ahead with the SSC-8 missile, deploying it as an operational system, the report said. Russia now has two battalions of the cruise missile, the newspaper quoted administration officials as saying. One is located at Russia's missile test site at Kapustin Yar in the country's southeast. The other cruise missile battalion has been located at an operational base elsewhere in Russia, the Times quoted one unidentified official as saying.

NEW YORK (AP) -- A former store clerk was convicted Tuesday of murder in one of the nation&apos;s most haunting missing-child cases, the disappearance of 6-year-old Etan Patz on the way to the school bus stop 38 years ago....

Today's Headlines and CommentaryLawfare (blog)Then-Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper, Jr. and then-CIA Director John Brennan agreed with Yates's assessment and concurred with her recommendation to inform the White House. It is unclear what McGahn did with the information. The AP ...and more »

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. lawmakers, including some leading Republicans, called on Tuesday for a deeper inquiry into White House ties to Russia, after national security adviser Michael Flynn was forced out in President Donald Trump's biggest staff upheaval so far.

The most successful modern publisher of ideological journalism is Rupert Murdoch. He buys media properties, or starts new ones, and turns them into conservative megaphones.

In England, he carefully nudged the venerable Times to the right, while his tabloids mocked Labour Party politicians as weaklings or Stalinists. In the United States, he transformed the once-liberal New York Post into a peppery conservative tabloid and then built Fox News from scratch.

Clearly, he enjoys both populist and elite media. And in 2007, he bought a journalistic jewel, The Wall Street Journal.

Now The Journal’s newsroom is embroiled in a fight over the paper’s direction.

Many staff members believe that the paper’s top editor, Gerard Baker, previously a feisty conservative commentator, is trying to Murdoch-ize the paper. “There is a systemic issue,” one reporter told me. The dissatisfaction went public last week, with stories in Politico and the Huffington Post. At a staff meeting on Monday, Baker dismissed the criticism as “fake news,” Joe Pompeo and Hadas Gold of Politico reported.

As a longtime reader, admirer and competitor of The Journal, I think the internal critics are right. You can see the news pages becoming more politicized. You can also see The Journal’s staff pushing back, through both great journalism (includingexposeson the Trump administration) and quiet insubordination.

Consider The Journal’s coverage of Trump’s false voter-fraud allegations. The stories are mostly solid, noting Trump has no evidence. The headlines often tend toward stenography:

Trump Seeks Election Fraud Probe

Trump Takes Aim at ‘Millions’ of Votes

Top Adviser Repeats Vote-Fraud Claims

Reporters and editors have become accustomed to the “shaving off the edges” of Trump-related stories, one said, especially in headlines and initial paragraphs. The insubordination shows up in later paragraphs, where reporters include harder-hitting information.

There is no shortage of troubling anecdotes: A revealing story about Trump’s white-supremacist support that never ran in print. A dearth of stories about climate change and frightened immigrants. An email from Baker encouraging the staff not to mention the Muslim makeup of the countries when describing Trump’s immigration ban (partly rescinded after BuzzFeed disclosed the email). Glowing stories about Trump — “astonishing,” one longtime editor said — by a reporter who once tweeted a photo of herself smiling with Trump on his jet.

More generally, staffers are worried about Trump-Journal chumminess. Ivanka Trump was until recently a trustee of the Murdoch estate. In The Journal’s Washington bureau, eyebrows rose when Baker’s assistant called to ask how to send Trump a memento: a printing-press plate from an edition reporting his ascendance. (A spokeswoman said no plate was sent.)

The Journal’s opinion pages, of course, have long been conservative. And they have their own tensions: An editor critical of Trump was recently fired, The Atlantic reported. But The Journal’s news pages, like those of The New York Times, The Washington Post and elsewhere, have aspired to objectivity.

One way to understand the fight is through the lens of Fox News. Its former leader, Roger Ailes, knew that the country had become more polarized and that many viewers didn’t want sober objectivity. He also knew that most reporters leaned left, and their beliefs sometimes seeped into coverage.

So Ailes came up with a brilliantly cynical strategy. He created a conservative news channel that dispensed with objectivity, and sometimes with facts, while claiming it was more objective — “Fair and Balanced” — than the competition.

The Wall Street Journal is no Fox News, and Baker, who’s publicly acknowledged Trump’s untruths and celebrated some hard-hitting stories, is no Ailes. Yet it’s easy to see how The Journal could continue down the Murdoch path.

Baker believes that most media is hopelessly biased, Journal staffers say. He views his critics as liberal whiners, and his approach as the fair and balanced one.

I happen to agree that liberal bias can be a media problem. On important issues — abortion, education, parenting and religion, to name a few — left-leaning beliefs too often distort coverage. The Journal, and every newspaper, should indeed fight that problem.

But that’s very different from saying reporters protect any political party. They don’t. Journalists’ incentives and instincts all point the other way. Which is why the media reported so aggressively on Hillary Clinton’s emails, damaging her badly.

Observers of Murdoch’s company believe that his sons, rising in power, don’t care as much about conservative causes as their father. If that’s right, it’s possible to imagine many more years of The Wall Street Journal as one of the world’s best newspapers, enlightening readers and, yes, making life difficult for competitors.

After all, has there ever been a more important time for sophisticated and fearless financial journalism?

Repairing relations with Russia can begin in Ukraine. The parameters for such a compromise were laid out in the Minsk agreement of 2015, which committed Russia to disarm separatists in eastern Ukraine and Ukraine to draw up a new federal constitution granting enhanced autonomy to the Donbas, the eastern Ukrainian region that has declared independence. The United States should work with Russia on a compromise for the Donbas, which should be demilitarized and secured by a United Nations peacekeeping force. Meanwhile, the Russian annexation of the Crimean peninsula should be accepted (since short of a world war there is no way Russia will give it up). Though the annexation shouldn’t be recognized legally, American sanctions on Russia should be lifted.

American and NATO officials like to claim that such a compromise would encourage Russian aggression elsewhere. This view is based on self-deception on the part of Western elites who are interested in maintaining confrontation with Russia as a distraction from more important, painful problems at home, like migration, industrial decline and anger over globalization.

A child with a map can look at where the strategic frontier between the West and Russia was in 1988 and where it is today, and work out which side has advanced in which direction. So it is necessary to recognize that over the past generation, Russia’s actions — though sometimes wrong and even criminal — have been overwhelmingly reactive to what the West has done. Russia’s intervention in Ukraine is about Ukraine, a country of supreme historical, ethnic, cultural, strategic and economic importance to Russia. It implies nothing for the rest of Eastern Europe.

If, as many of the hawks in Brussels and Washington claim, Russia wanted to undermine and then invade Latvia, it would have done so after 2008, when the Latvian economy was in collapse and it would have been easy to create a crisis there. Instead, Moscow did nothing — the Russian government is well aware that any such move would bring Western Europe and the United States back together in hostility toward Russia.

If Russia does invade Latvia or one of the other Baltic States, of course, the United States and its allies would have to fight — and fight hard — to defend them. These countries are members of NATO and the European Union. To surrender them to Russian aggression would make the West look both morally bankrupt and geopolitical impotent. But it is hard to imagine any realistic situation in which this need will arise.

Eastern Europe is not the only arena where the American agenda has proved inept. In Syria, the United States and Western Europe have bungled the war. Here, too, Mr. Trump’s plans to cooperate with Russia would be a welcome change. Because of Russian, Iranian and now Turkish support, Mr. Assad’s Syrian state is not going to fall. If it is to be transformed in the future, negotiation with Russia and Iran will be necessary.

Iran is an essential ally against the jihadists in Iraq and Syria. And that means that the White House will soon discover the dangerous inconsistencies in its policies. Both Mr. Trump and his recently resigned national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, have spoken of prioritizing the fight against the Islamic State. But by simultaneously expressing desire for a new confrontation with Iran, they have demonstrated that they do not actually understand the word “priority.”

Furthermore, barring an open Iranian violation of the nuclear agreement, no imaginable American concession to Russia would persuade Moscow to agree to new international sanctions against Iran. One reason is that Russia sees good relations with Iran as permanently in its interest, whereas the policy makers in Moscow know that American concessions may be withdrawn by the next administration.

China may be the other major sticking point. While he has moderated his stand somewhat in recent weeks, Mr. Trump has suggested he is prepared for a confrontation with China. But Russia will not play along. With a 2,600-mile-long border with China and a hopelessly outnumbered army, there is no way that Russia can be persuaded to adopt an outright hostile stance toward its neighbor. The furthest that Russia might go as a result of a better relationship with the United States would be to limit sales of its most sophisticated weapons to China, and perhaps to help seek a United Nations-brokered international compromise over the islands disputed by China and its neighbors.

Since the end of the Cold War, Russia has not opposed the United States out of blind anti-Americanism. In the former Soviet countries, Russia has defended what the Russian establishment sees — rightly or wrongly — as vital Russian national interests.

Elsewhere in the world, Russia has clashed with the United States for reasons that have often been shared by many Americans, and have often later been proved correct: opposition to the invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s regime in Libya being the most notable examples. While Russia wants good relations with the United States, it will not lend blanket support to American global primacy. If that is what the Trump administration is hoping for, it will be sorely disappointed, and the latest attempt at reconciliation with Russia will fail.

WASHINGTON, (Reuters) - U.S. producer prices rose more than expected in January, recording their largest gain in four years amid increases in the cost of energy products and some services, but a strong dollar continued to keep underlying inflation tame.

Michael Flynn’s son, who was fired from Donald Trump’s transition for spreading conspiracy theories on social media, said Tuesday that a “disinformation campaign” was responsible for his father’s ouster as national security adviser.

“The disinformation campaign against my father won #AmericaFirst #USA #Flynn #FlynnResignation,” Michael Flynn Jr., who formerly served as a top adviser to his father, wrote on Twitter.

Flynn resigned as national security adviser on Monday night as controversy continued to swirl around conversations he had during the transition with the Russian ambassador to the United States. Flynn discussed sanctions the U.S. imposed in retaliation for Russian interference in the election, then repeatedly denied having done so. Vice President Mike Pence was among those who Flynn denied the accusations to, and Pence repeated the false claim on television.

The White House has not denied the reports about Flynn’s conversations, and Flynn himself acknowledged providing “incomplete information” to the Vice President in his resignation letter, making it unclear what “disinformation” Flynn Jr. is referring to. Kellyanne Conway, a top adviser to Trump, said Tuesday morning that Flynn’s misleading of Pence was the “key” to his fall.

This may not have been the first time Flynn misled Pence. Pence stated in a television interview during the transition that Flynn’s son had not been given a security clearance by the transition, even though he had been granted a clearance. The New York Times reported that Flynn had told Pence’s team his son had not been given a clearance.

Flynn Jr. has an outsize presence on Twitter, where he frequently voices support for Trump and spread debunked conspiracy theories about Hillary Clinton. As the White House recently pushed back against suggestions that its travel ban was in fact targeted at Muslims, the younger Flynn took to Twitter to celebrate what he called a “Muslim ban,” deeming it “necessary.”

After POLITICO wrote about that incident, Flynn Jr. appeared to delete his Twitter account. But it came alive again Tuesday morning. He pinned the “disinformation” tweet to the top of his page, ensuring any visitors to his account will see it.

New York Observer: Given President Donald Trump’s focus on creating U.S. jobs and bolstering support for Israel, we have an opportunity to grow the commercial and economic alliance between our two countries

MOSCOW (AP) -- The Kremlin on Tuesday played down the resignation of U.S. National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, a sign that Russia is already looking ahead to talks with the U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to improve the two nations&apos; strained ties....

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, preparing for his first meeting with President Donald Trump at the White House, will work with advisers on Tuesday to align Israeli and U.S. thinking on the Middle East and ensure "no gaps" remain.

The Russian aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov was followed by more than 50 NATO ships on its way to Syria and back; this was by no means "an easy walk" for those vessels, Russian military commentator Viktor Baranets told Sputnik.